Does the Government Really Believe in "Choice"? When it Comes to Sex, Yes. Food Choices? Not so Much.

Here is an interesting post on HotAir about the "nudging".

JE Dyer asks, "What if government treated eating the way it treats sex?"

It’s a useful distinction to consider.  A particular moral idea governs left-wing views on social and health matters, and the left’s purpose with political advocacy is to put the power of government behind that view.  By examining the left’s very different policy approaches to eating and sex, we can discern the features of the morality at work.

.....If government treated obesity the way it treats sex, it would encourage schoolchildren to explore their enjoyment of Twinkies, Oreos, and moon pies; it would employ professionals to devise ways of suiting government policies to the principle that our bodies belong to us and we can put whatever we want in our stomachs; it would hold legislative hearings on the overriding importance of the freedom to eat what we want; it would resist the very idea of remedies that involve the individual eating less, or eating different things; it would pay for liposuction, cholesterol drugs, heart surgery, and diabetes-mitigation measures but not for programs of diet and exercise; it would encourage the development of drugs that could prevent fat formation regardless of what one eats; and it would make it a basic human right to be able to eat whatever one wants and have the consequences mitigated by the public. (emphasis added)


This is a most illuminating article on how the government wants to control the behavior of its citizens in a particular direction and it provides excellent examples of "nudging".